Robotics: Basics and Selected Advanced Concepts
INTENDED AUDIENCE :Primarily Master’s and Ph D students in mechanical, electrical and computer science disciplines. UG students taking Robotics as an elective.
PREREQUISITES : UG level mathematics and programming knowledge
INDUSTRIES SUPPORT : Ashok Leyland, Chennai, GE and GM, TAL and Tata Motors, Government organizations such as ISAC-ISRO (Bangalore), BARC (Mumbai) and CAIR-DRDO (Bangalore)
ABOUT THE COURSE : This course starts with an introduction to robotics, the key elements and constituents of a robot and science and technology in robots. It provides a unified treatment for the modelling and analysis of serial, parallel, and hybrid manipulators using the key concept of Denavit-Hartenberg parameters, solution of the direct and inverse kinematics of serial and parallel robots and the associated concepts of workspace and mobility are presented. The concept of velocity of the links of the robots and the Jacobian matrix is developed and the associated concepts of singularities in robots are discussed in depth. The equations of motion are derived using the Lagrangian formulation and their solutions using numerical methods are presented. To fully understand control of robots, basic concepts in linear control is introduced using the example of control of a single link of a robot and then the more advanced concept of model-based control is discussed. The course also introduces advanced topics in robotics such as modelling and analysis of wheeled mobile robots, deployable structures and cable driven and pneumatically actuated small/micro robots. The course draws upon a great deal on experiments and hardware developed by research students at IISc and software simulations and hardware experiments are suggested for the course students to do on their own to complement the material taught in the course.
Prof. Ashitava Ghosal
IISc Bangalore
Ashitava Ghosal is a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing at IISc, Bangalore since 1988. He completed his PhD from Stanford University, California, M.S from University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida and B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.His broad research area is in robotics and other computer controlled mechanical systems, nonlinear dynamics and product design. He is the author of “Robotics: Fundamental Concepts and Analysis” by Oxford University Press (2006) which is used as a textbook in many UG and PG programs in India and abroad.He has 3 patents, published 78 archival journal papers and 80 papers in national and international conferences. He has guided 15 PhDs and more than 70 Masters students at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is currently associate editor of the international journals Mechanism and Machine Theory (Elsevier), Mechanics Based Design of Structures and Machines (Taylor & Francis), Journal of Mechanisms and Robots (ASME) and has been an associate editor of ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (2006-2013). He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science) and was elected as a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2010. More information is available at https://mecheng.iisc.ac.in/~asitava
Course layout
Week 1:Introduction, Elements of a robot
Week 2:Mathematical preliminaries, D-H convention, Examples
Week 3: Direct and Inverse kinematics of serial robots, Workspace, Analytical and numerical solutions
Week 4:Parallel robots – direct and inverse kinematics, Mobility, Stewart-Gough platform
Week 5:Applications of parallel robots in sun tracking, vibration isolation
Week 6:Velocity analysis, Singularities in serial and parallel robots, Statics
Week 7: Redundancy and resolution of redundancy in robots
Week 8:Dynamic equations of motion, derivation & simulation using Matlab
Week 9:Motion planning, Introduction to linear control, simulations & experiments
Week 10:Nonlinear position and force control of robots, Simulations
Week 11: Wheeled mobile robots, modeling and simulations
Week 12:Over-constrained and deployable structures, Cable driven & pneumatically actuated flexible robots
Books and references
Robotics: Fundamental Concepts and Analysis, Oxford University Press, 2006
Recent research papers
